


Retrieving the Hacker

by bookstorequeer



Category: Leverage, The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstorequeer/pseuds/bookstorequeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a grumpy retrieval specialist sloughing through the jungle in search of a lost hacker... How Eliot Spencer met Jake Jensen is not exactly a tale for the ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retrieving the Hacker

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Emocezi for being awesome, as always. I blame her for making me love the idea of Eliot and Jensen so much. (Thanks!)

His body hurt, his face was a mess of bruises and contusions, and he had yet to actually lock eyes on his target. It had been nearly a week since he’d done more than catnap and two days of sloughing through this damned jungle without anything other than the MREs his client had given him before sending him on his way. To say that Eliot Spencer was not a happy man would be an exaggeration.

He grit his teeth and picked off the Brazilian Wandering Spider that was creeping up his ankle. Eliot tried to ignore the burn in his over-tired muscles and dropped for cover, crawling on his belly the last few yards as the compound he was aimed at came into sight. He was on his own, but he liked it that way because then there was no one else to watch out for and he was too tired to be looking out for anyone but himself. He was exhausted physically and mentally from the work that he had sold his soul into, before this opportunity had even arisen. He woke up regretting the day that he'd signed on with the devil.

As he assessed the guards, watching for weaknesses in their patrols and cataloguing the above-par make of their machine guns, the retrieval specialist tried to remind himself that it was the payoff that made this job worth it. Success should give him enough money to get out from Moreau’s hold and that was worth more to him than the gold bars he wasn’t stealing. No, this time his target was something a little larger, more 6-feet-tall for a change.

He had nearly laughed in the colonel’s face when they told him that it was a hacker he was retrieving and not highly classified military secrets or some lost reporter but his respect for the military in general and special forces in specific stopped him. He knew some green berets and they were good guys; they'd appreciate him going in for one of their own. Eliot would have done this job for less, if only to have a Lt. Colonel attached to the CIA who owed him a favour but he could settle for a good payout instead.

When they said “hacker,” he imagined some scrawny thing with thick glasses and weak arms, despite knowing that spec ops had to mean “capable.” But even if he’d tried to ignore all the stereotypes that had ever been true, Eliot Spencer would never have imagined the blond, built, smart-mouthed man that grinned at him with bloody teeth and blank eyes.

“Love the hair, butch,” came the hoarse chuckle, “reminds me of a sniper I've heard rumours about.”

Eliot growled, checked the hallway once again and yanked on the door until it opened. He'd slipped in with only a minimum of bloodshed but that was no reason to get sloppy now that he had an extra body to look out for. He was grudgingly impressed when the hacker stayed out of his reach as he stepped inside the dimly lit cell, especially since the file said that the target was supposed to be wearing glasses. The squinted gaze, the lack of depth perception, and lousy hand-eye coordination made him think that he should be more concerned about a concussion to go with the obviously broken arm and burns.

“Apparently I’m supposed to tell you that ' _it's dangerous to go alone, so take these_ ,'” Eliot gritted out as he handed over a spare set of glasses and adding, “and, ‘ _Go Petunias_ ,’” when that failed to bring a thawing to the soldier’s posture.

Cpl Jake Jensen’s shoulders dropped with falling tension and he chirped, “Awesome! And you are?”

“Eliot Spencer.”

Jensen whistled softly, limping with surprising speed after Eliot and pausing to poke a boot into the ribs of every fallen drug-runner that they passed.

“Wow, see, now I feel special.”

“What?” He didn’t want to ask but keeping the kid talking was the easiest way to keep him conscious and Eliot didn’t want to have to drag those gangly limbs back through the jungle.

“You! You’re, like, the Chuck Norris of retrieval specialists! The Obi Wan of Jedis, the… the… I can’t believe Clay went to _you_ for little ol’ me.”

The hitter didn’t respond, since he didn’t know what Jensen was talking about. He grunted every now and again to show that he was listening but aside from monosyllabic answers when he could get away with them, he was quiet. Prods and shoves in the right direction were enough; Jensen had some of the same training that Eliot did and, contrary to the damned running commentary, the kid wasn’t stupid. Eliot was almost curious enough to ask how such a well-trained soldier had gotten himself into this mess in the first place. Almost.

 

They settled down for the darkest part of night in the hollow beneath a fallen tree with rock on three sides. It was dirty but they were below the swarming gnats and Eliot could live with it. He bound Jensen’s broken arm before they lost their light but could do little for the man’s busted ribs and head injury.

“Don’t die.”

“Oh man, this concussion is nothing! You should’ve seen the one I got in basic when this three hundred pound gorilla landed on me. It’s a funny story, actually. See, we were doing the obstacle course and, of course I was behind Helman. I’m not sure how much was fat and how much was muscle but damn that fucker was heavy! And since I don’t think they’ve checked the ropes on the wall-climb since they hung them like eighty years ago, I got an F-5 concussion and a semi-permanent crick in my neck when I spend too long staring at a computer screen. Kind of inconvenient for a hacker, you know? I mean, for this op alone I spent almost three days hacking into the… well, I can’t tell you _where_ I was hacking, because then I’d have to kill you and I kind of don’t want to do that, because you’re the only one who knows how to get out of this damn jungle – and did I say thank you for rescuing me? Thanks for rescuing me, by the way. I’m sure Clay would’ve done it but I think the fact that I got ambushed in the first place means that we have a mole on the team because there was no way that my intel about the building plans weren’t good. Those guards should _not_ have been there – it was a basement! They kept kitchen supplies down there, for fuck’s sakes, there was no reason that they should’ve been down there. But noooooo, I slip in one little window and bam, head injury. I think it was Mason but it might've been Howard, the dick. He's had it out for me since day one. Someday I'm going to get on a good team, I just know it. I mean, Clay's good, as far as COs go, although he spends a little too much time trying to get laid, I think. He should focus more on holding his team together – not that I need the help, of course, though my broken arm might say something a little different – but Mason or Howard wouldn't have done this if Clay had listened to me when I said that something hinky was going on, right? And then you wouldn't have had to come and get me – thanks again, by the way, those guys were real assholes. They wouldn't even let me torrent Dr. Who, can you believe it? I'm glad to be out of there. Thanks to you. And, uh, speaking of... I’d imagine that Clay’s probably busy working on court marshals or putting together a new team for the next job or something. Right? I mean, there’s got to be a reason he didn’t come to get me himself, right?”

Eliot paused in attempting to form the dirt beneath his head into something more comfortable and ignoring a truly impressive stream of concussed babble, and instead glanced at his companion. The kid was scrunched into the corner of their hideout, eyes red-rimmed with a lack of sleep. He didn’t like how blank that expression still was, for all that he could see insecurity beneath the cracks in Jensen’s mask.

“He picked up some shrapnel in the torso,” Eliot sighed, giving up sleep for some reason he wasn’t up to examining at this exact moment in the middle of the jungle with a 20-something baby green beret now looking at him like he’d stolen Thanksgiving and brought Christmas instead – fear and hope trying to balance out.

“Is he okay?”

“He will be. But he’s in no shape to get you.”

“What about…”

“I didn’t meet anyone else.”

“Oh. Okay.”

There was a moment of blessed silence and then Eliot was asleep. He awoke when a finger poked his shoulder; Jensen whimpered when he bent the digit near to breaking and blinked in the shallow light.

“What?” he growled, body aching more now than it was before he’d rested.

“I, uh, do you have any food?”

Eliot cursed softly and pried open an MRE that Jensen ate with shaking fingers. He watched the shadows lighten outside of their shelter and didn’t think about how hungry the kid must’ve been to chance waking him.

 

They made decent time through the jungle, despite Eliot wishing that he’d brought enough painkillers for the both of them when the day stretched interminably. It still took another day and a half before they found the jeep he’d left hidden and the road out felt bumpier than when he'd first driven it because he felt for the kid; there wasn’t anything he could do for broken bones but he wanted to and that surprised him.

He thought about Jensen after dropping the kid off at the pre-arranged hospital, stopping in to tell Lt. Colonel Clay that the job had been successful, and showering off the grime of the Brazilian jungle. He hoped the blond would be okay as he whipped up a filling chicken pot pie and dug in with a beer and a week-old hockey game on the TV. He went to sleep imagining that it must’ve hurt as much as the first break to set Jensen’s arm and awoke hoping there was no lasting damage from the concussion.

A week went by and Eliot found himself still answering to Moreau. He spent his spare-time reading, like he always did, and wondering before he could stop himself about the kid-hacker he’d rescued from the jungle. He thought he was hallucinating when he saw Jensen again, looking pale but determined on his doorstep. Eliot closed his eyes, took a breath, and told himself that whatever it was, it would work out. Even if he had to help it along.

**End.**


End file.
